Revisiting fundamentals, introducing any form of change to an institution is only possible if the benefits are multifold at a cost fractional to it. Aiming to bring a change into the education sector, Techlogix, a globally leading Consulting and IT Services Company and an Oracle Platinum Partner, moderated a deployment of Techlogix Enterprise Campus Solutions across 9 universities of Pakistan previously. Taking the technology across ASEAN, De La Salle University from Philippines has recently jumped board for a replacement of its homegrown system with the same with a Project Kick Off Ceremony on the 27th of April, 2011.

Expanding its outreach in the ASEAN region, Techlogix has carried out similar sign-offs with leading universities in Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam and Thailand as well. Present at the DLSU Enterprise Campus Solution Project Kick Off were Rizwan Rashid, Vice President for Professional Services at Techlogix, Darren Rushworth, Managing Director at Oracle Philippines and Vice President at Oracle Asia Pacific, Narciso Erguiza FSC, President of DLSU, Edler Panlilio, Sales Country Manager at Oracle Philippines, and Abigail Yap-Ang, Chief Executive Officer at ABS.

Key modules to be deployed as part of Techlogix Enterprise Campus Solutions at the DLSU include PeopleSoft Enterprise Student Administration, PeopleSoft Enterprise Campus Self Service, PeopleSoft Enterprise Contributor Relations and PeopleSoft Enterprise Campus Solutions Warehouse. Making mundane tasks interactive, collaborative for the faculty and the management, PeopleSoft Enterprise Campus Solutions will centralize the entire Student Information System, provide a calendar view of a faculty’s teaching schedule, enable one-click email to a select group of students, and help review the students’ academic progress through degree audit. For the student, PeopleSoft Enterprise Campus Solutions will avail access to and track application status, view class and exam schedules, request record of transcripts, courses, and make online credit payments amongst other facilities.

Involving 15,000 students and over 1,000 faculty and staff members, the project is expected to complete in 12 months.

As Salman Akhtar, CEO at Techlogix observes, “DLSU has engaged Techlogix to enable it to achieve a flexible system that can quickly adapt to the changing requirements of higher education, and we look forward to delivering on it as we have done previously with various other academic institutions.”

You may need to backup your data if you are planning on changing your phone, be able to get back everything in case of a theft/loss or to just get the phone the way it was before (without losing Contacts/SMS).

I did it for the last reason & surprisingly the battery life doubled, exactly what I needed (probably because of lots of background services not running anymore).

Better backup before the world gets upside down on you.

(Note: This guide is for both non-rooted & rooted phones but users having root access should try Titanium Backup)

Things we will Backup

• Contacts
• System Settings
• SMS
• Call Logs
• - Applications

Software you’ll need

• Astro File Manager
• SMS Backup & Restore
• Call Logs Backup & Restore
• AVG Anti-Virus Free (Optional)

Contacts & System Settings

If you have a Gmail account associated with your phone (& definitely it is) than it’s a non-issue because all your contacts are automatically backed up with Gmail & in the same way restored automatically on a new/refreshed phone.

But if you still somehow want an offline backup or all you contacts in one file, go to Contacts, Press the Menu soft key, Select Import/Export, Select Export to SD Card, Select OK & all your contacts will be saved to the SD Card.

For system settings make sure in Privacy Settings ‘Backup my Data’ is checked (in previous versions, before Android 2.2, check ‘Backup my Settings’).

This will, like contacts, backup your settings online & restore them when needed. Some known settings that will get restored:

• WiFi Settings (including saved networks)
• Wallpaper
• Accessibility Settings
• User Dictionary
• Privacy Settings
• Certain Apps are Re-Installed

But don’t just expect you stuff to instantly re-appear after a restore. Give your phone sometime. The User Dictionary restore may only work in Android 2.2+.

Backing Up SMS

SMS Backup & Restore does what its name says and does just that. It exports all you messages to an XML file on your SD Card. You can get it Installed from the Market.

SMS Backup + is another tool that will backup all your SMS/MMS & Call Logs to your Gmail account. It actually sends them as email to your inbox & labels them appropriately. Am not exactly sure about it’s restore process though it claims it can restore them.

SMS Backup & Restore has a Preview feature to preview messages in the backup file before restoring it & also allows you to find duplicate messages, plus a delete all messages in memory option too.

Call Logs

Install “Call Logs Backup & Restore” from Android Market. The options are simple, just click Backup & it will save your logs into an XML file. The saved file has no ‘styling’ information so if you open it in IE, FireFox, Opera, and Chrome etc. it won’t look neat but is readable. The time, date & phone number can be read from it easily. Android keeps up to 500 logs, so that’s the max it an backup.

The same preview and delete options are here too.

Applications

Start Astro File Manager, press the Menu key & select Tools. Select Application Manager/Backup. Here you have an option to select individual Apps or all of them. Choose the ones that you like & click Backup, Oh you can’t click it… no worries just tap it

[OPTIONAL] AVG Anti-Virus Free

AVG Anti-Virus Free is a ‘One App’ solution to all backup operations. The catch? You cannot backup individual category like say just the messages or just the bookmarks & the restore will delete all the previous info & replace it with the ones in the backup file. If it’s a new system that’s completely OK. Still it’s a powerful tool and largely hassle free. The ‘App Backup’ will backup your Applications, the same way as Astro. Why it is in the end and not recommended as the only solution? Because it is a Beta feature & may hang during the restore process.

Important Step:

Your call log, SMS, Contacts & Applications are now on your SD Card. Connect your phone to a PC & transfer the files/folders described below or email the smaller files to yourself (I use Gmail) as a fast easy way for online storage/retrieval.

Files: 00001.vcf (or 00002.vcf it that one already exists)

Folders: CallLogBackupRestore, SMSBackupRestore, backups (contains your apps), droidbackupdir (if you used AVG Anti-Virus Free).

Refresh Your Phone

Go to Settings > Privacy > Factory Data Reset.

You phone will restart and it will be like new

Copy the above mentioned files back to the SD Card, install the respective apps and hit restore on each one of them, that’s all. Besides these there are tons of different apps on the Android Market, you are free to explore them Do check Lookout Mobile Security, unlike the other apps it backs them up online.

The latest version of Google’s Chrome shows the potential of HTML5.

Early adopters can now get a sneak peek at the future of the Web by downloading the latest prerelease, or “beta,” version of Chrome, Google’s Web browser. One of the most interesting new features is an ability to translate speech to text—entirely via the Web.

The feature is the result of work Google has been doing with the World Wide Web Consortium’s HTML Speech Incubator Group, the mission of which is “to determine the feasibility of integrating speech technology in HTML5,” the Web’s new, emerging standard language.

A Web page employing the new HTML5 feature could have an icon that, when clicked, initiates a recording through the computer’s microphone, via the browser. Speech is captured and sent to Google’s servers for transcription, and the resulting text is sent back to the website.

To experiment with the voice-to-text feature, download the latest beta version of Chromehere. Then go to this webpage, click on the microphone, and start talking. You’ll probably find the results mixed, and sometimes hilarious. Using the finest elocution I could muster, I read the opening passage of Richard Yates’s Revolutionary Road: “The final dying sounds of their dress rehearsal left the Laurel Players with nothing to do but stand there, silent and helpless.” I got error messages several times in a row (“speech not recognized” or “connection to speech servers failed”). Once, I received this transcription: “9 sounds good restaurants on the world there’s nothing to do with fam vans island.”

The new feature derives in large part from experiments Google conducted through its Android operating system for mobile devices. For more than a year, saysVincent Vanhoucke, a member of Google’s voice recognition team, Android app developers have been able to integrate voice recognition into their apps using technology provided by Google. This has provided Google with useful voice data with which to train its voice-recognition algorithms. Today, some 20 percent of searches on Android phones are conducted using voice recognition, says Vanhoucke: people use voice recognition to write texts, send emails, or conduct searches. “It has really opened up interesting new avenues,” says Vanhoucke.

However, unlike desktop voice-to-text software, which first accustoms itself to a user’s voice, Chrome is trying to churn out text from voice without prior training.

”

I suppose if they keep track of [the] IP address, they could adapt” to a given user’s voice, says Jim Glass, a speech recognition expert at MIT. Glass notes that the mobile phone provides an acoustic environment very different from that of a laptop or desktop computer; for one thing, a phone’s microphone is reliably placed right at the user’s mouth, unlike computer microphone setups in homes or offices. “This is the beta version of Chrome,” says Glass. “They’ll be collecting data, and we can be sure they will be refining their models–that’s the nature of the speech-recognition game.”

Even if it’s rough around the edges, sometimes the technology impresses. I tried once again and got back “the final warning sounds of the dress rehearsal at laurel players with nothing to do with stand there.” Not so bad. And the Chrome app nailed it to a letter when all I said was “the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.”

Third-party programmers have also begun creating Web pages capable of using the new feature of Chrome. Already available for trial is a browser plugin called Speechify that lets you search Google, Hulu, YouTube, Amazon, and other sites using voice with Chrome.

Other inventive uses could soon follow. “Games could be taking keyboard, mouse, touch, accelerometer, and speech input together,” says Karl Westin, an expert on HTML5 who works for Nerd Communications, based in Berlin, Germany. “Having an aeroplane game where you could actually scream ‘up, UP, UUUPPP!’ could be fantastic.”

But the technology is more than just a toy—it also points the way to a much more capable Web. HTML4, the last major version of the HTML language, emerged in 1997. Since then, plugins like Silverlight and Flash have added media-processing capabilities to the Web. But HTML5 enables media playback and offline storage via the browser.

“The insight we had was that more and more people were spending all their time in the browser,” says Google’s Brian Rakowski, group product manager for Chrome. E-mail and instant messaging increasingly take place in browsers rather than in separate e-mail or AIM applications. “We’d like it to be case that you never have to install a native application again,” says Rakowski. “The Web should be able to do all of it.”

source: technology review

Number of malicious programs targeting mobile devices has more than doubled between August 2009 and December 2010.

In 2010, over 65% more new threats targeting mobile devices were detected than in the previous year; said a report published by Kaspersky Lab.

The growing popularity of the Android platform has inevitably drawn the cybercriminals attention: in August 2010, the first malicious program targeting Android was detected, and since then, that number has reached 15 programs from a total of 7 families.

The first threats targeting Apple’s iPhone OS also appeared during this last reporting period, but infected only devices that had been jailbroken in order to install third-party games and other software not manufactured by Apple.

Most mobile threats continue to target the Java 2 Micro Edition (J2ME) platform, which is supported by a huge number of mobile devices. That means it is not only smartphones that are at risk of infection, but basic mobile phones as well. The second most-targeted platform is Symbian, with Python in third place.

The distribution of variants of detected threats, by platform

“The use of SMS Trojans is still the easiest and most effective means by which malicious users can earn money. The reason is relatively simple: any mobile device, be it a smartphone or a basic mobile phone, has a direct connection to its owner’s money via their mobile account. It is this ‘direct connection’ that cybercriminals actively exploit,” said the report.

From 2010 onwards, sending fee-based text messages ceased to be the sole illegal money-making scheme for virus writers developing threats targeting different platforms.

Other unlawful schemes such as redirecting mobile Internet banking users to phishing sites and stealing passwords sent by banks to mobile phones were also used. Mobile threats have become more complex than ever and include the emergence of mobile bots and other remotely-controlled software.

Kaspersky Lab predicts an increase in the number of vulnerabilities found on mobile platforms, as well as an increase in the number of threats for Android and the continued use of short numbers by cybercriminals.

Incoming search terms:

• khalid shehzad cto telenor
• pakistan nokia ovi

Well, here’s a bit of a twist — a concept device designed to actually a fund a Kickstarter-like service for concept devices. While that may not exactly inspire the most confidence, these concepts from the folks behind upstart Makible are certainly unique enough to get us interested. They included the standard headphone adapter pictured above, which promises to turn any set of headphones into a proper (and eye-catching) headset, as well as an iPhone headset adapter that will let you use any iPhone headset with your Android phone (check it out after the break). Both will apparently be limited to 10,000 units apiece assuming they get the necessary funding, with the headphone adapter setting you back $20, while the iPhone version runs just $10. Want to see them become a reality? Then you can hit up the link below to get your order in.

Makible

Incoming search terms:

• makible iphone headset adapter

Apple’s just dropped iOS 4.3.1 on iTunes users across the land, fixing a handful of issues related to enterprise apps, AV-out, iPod touch graphics problems, and cellular network connections; not the most exciting changelog, but it’s better than a slap across the face. As usual, the update is available for pretty much the full suite of iOS products — iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch alike. Go on, grab it!

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

TUAW

Download Squad

Mozilla (Windows), (Mac), (Linux)

Aptec held launch events in Pakistan to promote its position as the sole distributor of Symantec products in the country.

More than 120 channel executives from 60 channel resellers attended the events in Karachi and Lahore.

The meetings included expert speakers from Symantec as Aptec looks to equip Pakistani resellers with the skills required to sell the vendor’s products and solutions.

Essam Baghdady, VP at Aptec, pointed out the strong growth prospects for technology in emerging markets, claiming that the Pakistani ICT sector’s estimated value is already US$12.8 billion per annum. Aptec also cited figures claiming that the Pakistani IT market would grow 35% year-on-year in 2011 and that the in-country channel employed some 150,000 professionals in more than 1,500 IT companies.

Muhammed Tahir, senior technical manager at Symantec, provided a technical presentation on the vendor’s security offerings to delegates. Rizwan Ahmed, Aptec’s country manager in Pakistan also participated in the channel events.

Baghdady concluded: “Our partnership model focuses on optimizing availability and the ease of transactional business. We therefore put an emphasis on partner planning, enablement and joint campaigns. Investment in additional services and technologies can add value to our partners’ offerings.”

Aptec continues to extend its reach across the wider Middle East, Turkey and Africa region. In addition to its expansion in Pakistan, the distributor is also preparing to bulk up its presence in Azerbaijan, opening a new office in Baku.

Via ChannelMEA

Incoming search terms:

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Just in case if you don’t know, First ever PC computer virus, named as Brain, was written by two Pakistani bothers, Amjad Farooq Alvi and Basit Farooq Alvi, who are currently running an ISP, IPTV, Telephony and various other services under the name of Brain Telecommunication Limited.

Birthplace of this harmless virus is exactly where Brain’s office is today, and interestingly, both the brothers mentioned their address in virus code that they had written:

Welcome to the Dungeon
(c) 1986 Basit & Amjad (pvt) Ltd.
BRAIN COMPUTER SERVICES
730 NIZAM BLOCK ALLAMA IQBAL TOWN
LAHORE-PAKISTAN PHONE :430791,443248,280530.
Beware of this VIRUS….
Contact us for vaccination………… $#@%$@!!

At 25th anniversary of computer viruses, Mikko Hypponen, Chief Research Officer at F-Secure, visited Pakistan to look for the home of 25 years old BRAIN virus, which turned out to be the root of multi billion anti-virus software industry.

This virus was not destructive in nature, in fact, it was created to test the replication attributes of DOS. Brain was capable of copying itself to every disk that was inserted in Brain-hit computer. The only effect of BRAIN virus was that it used to change the disk label (the “name” of the disk). The volume label used to change to read: “©Brain”

Following is the video that Mikko released on the lookout of Brain and its owners,